Like any other sport, statistics are very important to baseball. Game and player statistics have been recorded perhaps ever since the creation of baseball. Managers and baseball scouts (and players, too!) use these statistics to aid them in devising plays and strategies to help their team.
There are two types of statistics that have been widely used ever since, that is the batting average for the batters and the earned run average. The batting average is the number of hits divided by the number of at bats, while the earned run average is the number of runs given up by a pitcher for every nine innings. These two have ruled the statistics of baseball. However, the rise of sabermetrics in baseball has changed the world of statistical baseball. For example, there has been what we call the on-base plus slugging or the OPERATES, which is a quite complicated formula that gauges a batter’s performance as opposed to using his or her batting average. This OPS merges the batter’s on-base percentage with his or her slugging percentage. The former is computed by adding the batter’s hits, walks and hit by pitches and then dividing this sum by the sum of the player’s at bats, bases on balls, hit by pitches, and sacrifice flies. While the latter, the slugging percentage, is computed by solving for the total bases divided by the at-bats. Another sabermetric is the WHIP or the walks plus hits per inning pitched. This gives a fine depiction of the pitcher’s abilities and is computed as the name suggests
Other statistics that are important are those that are specific for particular situations, that is, for example, for specific games and players. Minor or major, statistics are important for any sport as these help the teams win and analysts to understand the game.
